March 24, 2020

B'game Town Hall - COVID-19 local updates

The City Council and City staff ran an hour-long Zoom webinar tonight to update about 175 residents on the status of various actions to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. I thought it was very well done with kudos to the mayor and especially City Manager Lisa Goldman. The link to the recording is up on the city website here.

If you don't have an hour, here are a few of my takeaways. The County website SMChealth.org is "information central" for the most current counts of cases and for the status of shelter-in-place restrictions. It is usually updated mostly in the morning but the FAQs are continuously updated. The County is taking a number of steps to prepare for the anticipated uptick in cases. It has rented a number of B'game hotel rooms for non-hospitalization-needed cases; as well as first responders who may not have the ability to do their regular commutes. The County is also accepting volunteers' contact info and has about 1,000 volunteers already, but there is not yet a clear direction on what they might do. The same goes for our favorite local preparedness group BNN and its CERT-trained teams. More info to follow as recommended actions are decided upon.

The County has set up 211 phone service for those that may not know how or where to look on-line. I have to imagine that is more of a last resort for more complicated questions.

Similarly, if you see things in town that merit some intervention or seem non-essential--like groups of teens congregating in public or gardeners gardening-- you can call the Non-Emergency BPD phone at 650 777-4100. Officers will educate them and disperse where necessary and they have a flyer to hand out--so you should not do it yourself if you are not comfortable--and who would be? Note that housing construction and repair has been deemed an "essential service" by the county, so don't call about contractors.

The County has allocated $3M of Measure K funds to "help out" and is soliciting donations to a 501c3 named SMC Strong--more to follow when details emerge but I'm guessing you have several ideas on who needs support directly. CallPrimrose is accepting monetary donations, but no food, clothing, etc at this time.

Those are my key findings from the one-hour webcast and I believe we will be seeing more of these. In the future, we need to incorporate slides (graphics/text) so that items like phone numbers and websites don't have to be repeated verbally--people still don't reliably get them that way. This is standard stuff in the corporate world and can easily scale to meet municipal communication needs. All in all, good show. It's worth you going to view it--you probably have the time ;-(

Comments

It’s difficult for me to wait. Maybes can drive me nuts. Yes or no is a better answer for my mental health. When will this Stay Home thing end? Relatively easy for me, but the economic hit is going to be hard for others for a long time...

In the meantime, how about this thought-experiment.

Let’s say the number of infections trend downward for 2 weeks. The authorities jointly declare a set “Personal Freedom/Responsibility Day to take place in another 10 days. Businesses are advised to be ready to open with the social distancing procedures they think appropriate as citizens are advised to social-distance and wear face coverings.

Personal Freedom/Responsibilty day is declared 10 days later and business slowly creaks back to life. If an outbreak of the virus begins to reappear, a 7 day SIP is requested as a civic duty.

In the meantime, during the PFR Day experiment, the citizens’ ability to shame, nag and hound people and businesses who shirk their civic duty should keep things in line as the experiment continues.

If after a month, the infection rate is low, then we consider the virus as we do any other flu.

OK- another thought experiment:

Now that we have the ability to detect and sorta track an epidemic/pandemic and see the deaths approaching and surrounding us, then, ethically, why would we not close down the nation for a month-long Winter-Flu Break every flu/cold season?

Shouldn’t every disease death count as much as one from Covid-19?

And, to take the thought-experiment further, why not enforce the prohibition of real killers such as alcohol and tobacco, and cars that can go faster than 20 mph.

To balance the thought experiment with societal values, remember the debate about the California water crises and the worries about how much water almond growers or cattle ranchers use? Never mentioned is the amount of water vineyards use.

OK- Have fun with these Thought-Experiments! Only serious responses recognized.

Only 17 new cases today (555 total). The number is quite low, but we are not yet to the point where one could say we are ready to get back to "normal" whatever that might end up being. I haven't been adding deaths to this thread--too morbid, but that number is really, really low.

Once we get some news on how much testing is really going on in the County and, even better, some sense of how many people have a fever and a cough and are just staying home because going into a hospital seems even more dangerous, then we can assess where we are regarding Pete's "Personal Freedom/Responsibility Day".

Today's count of cases is really, really low. 5 new cases. That's the lowest since early March. If this keeps up, something is going to have to change regarding the shelter-in-place rules. I hope the County and the State are thinking about some hybrid rule--recall Dave Pine was asking this question more than a week ago.

Another very low increase in cases-- +5 today just like yesterday. Total is 589. The County has added another section to the dashboard showing how many people are hospitalized with COVID-19; right now it's 159. Each section of the dashboard is still not totally in sync with each other, but I believe the big "New Cases" entry is probably the most accurate.

Today's update came later than usual - another LOW day, only +5 cases to 638.

I forgot to mention the various programs that the City is looking into--Michael Brownrigg and Donna Colson are leading the charge on how to help local businesses:

Burlingame officials blessed a package of programs worth an estimated nearly $1 million proposed to help suffering local businesses and residents recover from the hard times brought by COVID-19.

Launching a grant program targeting businesses, offering a gift card program to residents, paying merchant fees to business improvement districts and temporarily waiving downtown parking fees were among the initiatives considered by officials Monday, April 6.

12 new cases today up to a total of 652 since March 4th. The low numbers are causing people to ask if our high interactions with China due to Silicon Valley business interactions has given us a bit of herd immunity ahead of many places elsewhere in the country. Interesting theory.

The County numbers from last week appear to be shifting a bit retroactively, but that is probably to be expected. The changes are small. Right now the County is reporting 21 new cases over the weekend and a total of 701. The bar chart next to the 701 count actually shows 698 so again a tiny discrepancy.

You can see the shift since that is an increase of 49 cases (or 46 if you go by the bar chart) but only 21 came in the last two days.

There is also a new section of the page showing total tests given (6773) and the positive percentage (10.3%) so that is helpful to know.

My best guess is that approximately 2-3% of the SMC population are currently infected or have recovered from the infection. That’s around 15-25,000 people and they are all over the county and in every community. I don’t believe this number is off by a factor of 10, but it could be off by a factor of 2 to 3. Without the SIP, it could have well been over 50-75,000 by now, and that would have overwhelmed our healthcare system. So if you want to get a sense of how many infected or recovered cases are around you, just multiply your city population by 2 or 3%. My best guess on the number of people who are capable of transmitting the virus now is just under 1%, or approximately 5-7,000 people.
---------------
The city website lists our 2017 population as 30,686. Let's round it up to 31,000 and take the higher 3% estimate from Morrow. That means we have about 930 people that live in town and are infected or recovered and about 310 who are infectious.

Another Excellent comment Joe.
How many Latin people cooking "Take Out" @ Broadway/Burlingame Ave?
Low wage Service Workers live in very crowded conditions...
It is not uncommon that 4-6 Adults live in a One Bedroom.
Anyway "Take Out" is Gambling with CV19.

How did this happen everyone?
Is this what happened to the Dinosaurs?
Most likely, "The Dino's" were unable to Communicate and Plan..
Lucky for us "they" left us Oil.
Listening to "The Trump" Message seems like listening to Dinosaur's POV.

Post a comment

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Name is required to post a comment

Please enter a valid email address

Invalid URL

Please enable JavaScript if you would like to comment on this blog.

About the Voice

The Burlingame Voice is dedicated to informing and empowering the Burlingame community. Our blog is a public forum for the discussion of issues that relate to Burlingame, California. On it you can read and comment on important city issues.

Note: Opinions posted on the Burlingame Voice Blog are those of the poster and not necessarily the opinion of the editorial board of the Burlingame Voice. See Terms of Use

Copyright Notice

The information on this web site is protected by copyright. No portion of this web site may be distributed or reproduced by any means, or in any form, without prior written permission. Contact The Burlingame Voice editors for more information.